SPWR News & Events

SunPower announced the promotion of Kapil Rai to be EVP of the New Homes division, which also includes the Multifamily and Light Commercial segments. His mandate is to strengthen partnerships with builders, installation partners, financing companies, OEM suppliers, and customers nationwide.

SunPower hired Wendell Laidley as CFO, reporting to CEO T.J. Rodgers. Rodgers said, "Wendell Laidley, started his career in San Francisco, in equity research and worked his way up to VP at the Deutsche Bank Technology group run by Silicon Valley's legendary Frank Quattrone - the banker who took my company, Cypress Semiconductor, public. Wendell followed Quattrone's group to Credit Suisse where he was named to the Institutional Investor's All-America Research Team several times during his 1998-2002 tenure. He then became a stock portfolio manager in software for RS Investments, a spinout of San Francisco's Robertson-Stephens Investment Bank - the other bank that took Cypress public. After a detour to found and profitably run Napa's Realm Cellar Winery, he became the VP Finance for AppDynamics, a SaaS company for which he raised $278 million, followed by a similar stint at Big Switch Networks, both of which were acquired. His final Silicon Valley company was Life360, a family-oriented B2C consumer software company that he took public."

SunPower closed its $12M all-equity strategic acquisition of Cobalt Power Systems headquartered in Mountain View, California. Cobalt will continue to operate as a standalone subsidiary company with common financial, HR and administrative practices, focused on big premium renewable energy systems, across residential, new home, multifamily, and commercial projects, such as the recently announced installation by Cobalt using the new SunPower Monolith panel on the Fortinet building in Sunnyvale, California.